As human beings, we are more than the means to reproduce our species: both basic common sense and deeper philosophical inquiry affirm that marriage is, has been, can be, and should be about so very much more than procreation! The traditional Christian God (the one worshipped by the RR) is a violent, chauvinistic, moralistic, vengeful, selfish, angry lout, and the ideas of marriage they promote are patriarchal, narrow-minded, anti-feminist, uncreative, and ultimately STUPID and BORING!

Instead marriage should be about relationship, committment, love, and family, in the deepest and most inclusive sense of those terms—about building a life together—about creating, declaring, and upholding a bond that is at once personal, intimate, communal, civil, legal, and social—a consentual and intentional covenant between equal human individuals that establishes them as a nurturing, nourishing family unit. It is a union of persons, not genders, and thus, obviously, the gender configuration of the persons involved is entirely irrelevant to the legitimacy and/or sanctity of the union.

To value marriage is to affirm its validity and insist upon its accessibility for all who desire it. To champion marriage is to fight against the imposition of irrational limitations upon it by ill-informed, misguided, anxiety-driven "traditionalists". To uphold the dignity of marriage is to reject attempts to essentialize it, to caricaturize it as no more than—as I once said—a union for the facilitation of penile/vaginal intercourse (which sounds to me more like a marriage between a man and his bottle of Viagra!). To defend marriage is to protect it from the absurd illogic that would deny it to those who seek it, all the while pressuring it upon others who do not. To proclaim marriage as a basic human and civil right of all who mindfully choose it is to raise it to the most enlightened standard of human potential.

Indeed it is not the loving same-sex couples who are a threat to the "meaning" of marriage, but in fact it is the fearful, backward, small-minded forces of the RR that pose a threat to the growth and development of the human race.

My comments: Amen, George. As I've always said, it's all about priorities, and ours are very much in the wrong places.

A letter to Salon.com in response to this article (to which I was alerted by True Majority):

What I want to know is when the Democrats are going to start taking some of this information seriously and going after Bush in a big way. Information comes to light every day about how Bush has lied, about sinister neo-con plans to build a military empire and squash all dissent, about the myriad ways in which in three short years the Bush administration has made us less secure, less free, less healthy, and less well-off, but the Dems just don't seem to take it to heart. There's far more serious a case for impeaching Bush than their ever was for impeaching Clinton, but the Democratic party seems unwilling to take any definitive action against Bush, despite many calls from the American populous, and many of us would sure like to know why!